She Would Not Be Forgotten: The Women Who Brought Us the Savior-- a concert of Biblical stories
(This performance aired on Facebook Live on Friday, November 6, 2020, 7 pm CST.) Program notes The genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17 is a list of 41 men who “begat” sons. While we know they did not accomplish this feat solo, the names of the mothers are mostly left out, even forgotten. No Sarah, Rebekah, Leah or Rachel; and the line doesn’t run through Moses, Aaron, or Joshua. But there are 5 interruptions in this masculine lineage, names of women who would not be forgotten, though a neat, unblemished family folklore may prefer they were. TAMAR (Gen. 38:1-30) This story follows a tradition of Levirate marriage prescribed in Deuteronomy 25:5-6, obligating a brother to take his sister-in-law as wife if the brother dies; we’ll see this again in Ruth. However, Deuteronomy happens several centuries after the setting for this story, a reminder that these stories were not “reports” of something that happened in real time, as much as a shaping of the identity of a people despite chrono